The Trail of the Sword, Volume 3.

G >> Gilbert Parker >> The Trail of the Sword, Volume 3.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3

This eBook was produced by David Widger

[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD

By Gilbert Parker

EPOCH THE THIRD

XIII. "AS WATER UNTO WINE"
XIV. IN WHICH THE HUNTERS ARE OUT
XV. IN THE MATTER OF BUCKLAW
XVI. IN THE TREASURE HOUSE
XVII. THE GIFT OF A CAPTIVE
XVIII. MAIDEN NO MORE

CHAPTER XIII

"AS WATER UNTO WINE"

Three months afterwards George Gering was joyfully preparing to take
two voyages. Perhaps, indeed, his keen taste for the one had much to do
with his eagerness for the other--though most men find getting gold as
cheerful as getting married. He had received a promise of marriage from
Jessica, and he was also soon to start with William Phips for the
Spaniards' country. His return to New York with the news of the capture
of the Hudson's Bay posts brought consternation. There was no angrier
man in all America than Colonel Richard Nicholls; there was perhaps no
girl in all the world more agitated than Jessica, then a guest at
Government House. Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her
marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism,
he liked. He had long suspected the girl's interest in Iberville; if he
had known that two letters from him--unanswered--had been treasured,
read, and re-read, he would have been anxious. That his daughter should
marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of the
British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to harass
and to massacre--was not to be borne.

Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was now
often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose losses had
aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter with
him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would have borne all,
sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called on to bear them.
Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth, he imagined the
way a maid's fancy ought to go.

If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering would
cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess
it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an
event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference
of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging
fascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape
from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the
hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering's
favour, and her father's trouble decided her at last.

When Gering arrived at New York and told his story--to his credit with
no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier--she felt a pang greater
than she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at the
defeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover's failure and proud
of his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she was
angry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content while her
father and others called him buccaneer and filibuster, and she joyed that
old William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young Frenchman,
laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave, comely, and fine-
tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture of the forts was
genius: "Genius and pith, upon my soul!" he said stoutly; "and if he
comes this way he shall have a right hearty welcome, though he come to
fight."

In the first excitement of Gering's return, sorry for his sufferings and
for his injured ambition, she had suddenly put her hands in his and had
given her word to marry him.

She was young, and a young girl does not always know which it is that
moves her: the melancholy of the impossible, from which she sinks in a
kind of peaceful despair upon the possible, or the flush of a deep
desire; she acts in an atmosphere of the emotions, and cannot therefore
be sure of herself. But when it was done there came reaction to Jessica.
In the solitude of her own room--the room above the hallway, from which
she had gone to be captured by Bucklaw--she had misgivings. If she had
been asked whether she loved Iberville, she might have answered no. But
he was a possible lover; and every woman weighs the possible lover
against the accepted one--often, at first, to fluttering apprehensions.
In this brief reaction many a woman's heart has been caught away.

A few days after Gering's arrival he was obliged to push on to Boston,
there to meet Phips. He hoped that Mr. Leveret and Jessica would
accompany him, but Governor Nicholls would not hear of it just yet.
Truth is, wherever the girl went she was light and cheerfulness, although
her ways were quiet and her sprightliness was mostly in her looks. She
was impulsive, but impulse was ruled by a reserve at once delicate and
unembarrassed. She was as much beloved in the town of New York as in
Boston.

Two days after Gering left she was wandering in the garden, when the
governor joined her.

"Well, well, my pretty councillor," he said--"an hour to cheer an old
man's leisure?"

"As many as you please," she answered daintily, putting her hand within
his arm. "I am so very cheerful I need to shower the surplus." There
was a smile at her lips, but her eyes were misty. Large, brilliant,
gentle, they had now also a bewildered look, which even the rough old
soldier saw. He did not understand, but he drew the hand further within
his arm and held it, there, and for the instant he knew not what to say.
The girl did not speak; she only kept looking at him with a kind of
inward smiling. Presently, as if he had suddenly lighted upon a piece of
news for the difficulty, he said: "Radisson has come."

"Radisson!" she cried.

"Yes. You know 'twas he that helped George to escape?"

"Indeed, no!" she answered. "Mr. Gering did not tell me." She was
perplexed, annoyed, yet she knew not why.

Gering had not brought Radisson into New York had indeed forbidden him
to come there, or to Boston, until word was given him; for while he felt
bound to let the scoundrel go with him to the Spaniards' country, it was
not to be forgotten that the fellow had been with Bucklaw. But Radisson
had no scruples when Gering was gone, though the proscription had never
been withdrawn.

"We will have to give him freedom, councillor, eh? even though we
proclaimed him, you remember." He laughed, and added: "You would demand
that, yea or nay.

"Why should I?" she asked.

"Now, give me wisdom all ye saints! Why--why?

"Faith, he helped your lover from the clutches of the French coxcomb."

"Indeed," she answered, "such a villain helps but for absurd benefits.
Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and safety
at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you cannot
doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely bound
to speak him well--he saved my life."

Anxious to please her, he answered: "Wise as ever, councillor. What an
old bear am I: When I called him coxcomb, 'twas as an Englishman hating
a Frenchman, who gave our tongues to gall--a handful of posts gone, a
ship passed to the spoiler, the governor of the company a prisoner, and
our young commander's reputation at some trial! My temper was
pardonable, eh, mistress?"

The girl smiled, and added: "There was good reason why Mr. Gering brought
not Radisson here, and I should beware that man. A traitor is ever a
traitor. He is French, too, and as a good Englishman you should hate all
Frenchmen, should you not?"

"Merciless witch! Where got you that wit? If I must, I kneel;" and he
groaned in mock despair. "And if Monsieur Iberville should come knocking
at our door you would have me welcome him lovingly?"

"Surely; there is peace, is there not? Has not the king, because of his
love for Louis commanded all goodwill between us and Canada?"

The governor laughed bitterly. "Much pity that he has! how can we live
at peace with buccaneers?" Their talk was interrupted here; but a few
days later, in the same garden, Morris came to them. "A ship enters
harbour," he said, "and its commander sends this letter."

An instant after the governor turned a troubled face on the girl and
said: "Your counsel of the other day is put to rapid test, Jessica.
This comes from monsieur, who would pay his respects to me."

He handed the note to her. It said that Iberville had brought prisoners
whom he was willing to exchange for French prisoners in the governor's
hands.

Entering New York harbour with a single vessel showed in a strong light
Iberville's bold, almost reckless, courage. The humour of it was not
lost on Jessica, though she turned pale, and the paper fluttered in her
fingers.

"What will you do?" she said.

"I will treat him as well as he will let me, sweetheart." Two hours
afterwards, Iberville came up the street with Sainte-Helene, De Casson,
and Perrot,--De Troyes had gone to Quebec,--courteously accompanied by
Morris and an officer of the New York Militia. There was no enmity shown
the Frenchmen, for many remembered what had once made Iberville popular
in New York. Indeed, Iberville, whose memory was of the best, now and
again accosted some English or Dutch resident, whose face he recalled.

The governor was not at first cordial; but Iberville's cheerful
soldierliness, his courtier spirit, and his treatment of the English
prisoners, soon placed him on a footing near as friendly as that of years
before. The governor praised his growing reputation, and at last asked
him to dine, saying that Mistress Leveret would no doubt be glad to meet
her rescuer again.

"Still, I doubt not," said the governor, "there will be embarrassment,
for the lady can scarce forget that you had her lover prisoner. But
these things are to be endured. Besides, you and Mr. Gering seem as
easily enemies as other men are friends."

Iberville was amazed. So, Jessica and Gering were affianced. And the
buckle she had sent him he wore now in the folds of his lace! How could
he know what comes from a woman's wavering sympathies, what from her
inborn coquetry, and what from love itself? He was merely a man with
much to learn.

He accepted dinner and said: "As for Monsieur Gering, your excellency,
we are as easily enemies as he and Radisson are comrades-in-arms."

"Which is harshly put, monsieur. When a man is breaking prison he
chooses any tool. You put a slight upon an honest gentleman."

"I fear that neither Mr. Gering nor myself is too generous with each
other, your excellency," answered Iberville lightly.

This frankness was pleasing, and soon the governor took Iberville into
the drawing-room, where Jessica was. She was standing by the great
fireplace, and she did not move at first, but looked at Iberville in some
thing of her old simple way. Then she offered him her hand with a quiet
smile.

"I fear you are not glad to see me," he said, with a smile. "You cannot
have had good reports of me--no?"

"Yes, I am glad," she answered gently. "You know, monsieur, mine is a
constant debt. You do not come to me, I take it, as the conqueror of
Englishmen."

"I come to you," he answered, "as Pierre le Moyne of Iberville, who had
once the honour to do you slight service. I have never tried to forget
that, because by it I hoped I might be remembered--an accident of price
to me."

She bowed and at first did not speak; then Morris came to say that some
one awaited the governor, and the two were left alone.

"I have not forgotten," she began softly, breaking a silence.

"You will think me bold, but I believe you will never forget," was his
meaning reply.

"Yes, you are bold," she replied, with the demure smile which had charmed
him long ago. Suddenly she looked up at him anxiously, and, "Why did you
go to Hudson's Bay?" she asked.

"I would have gone ten times as far for the same cause," he answered, and
he looked boldly, earnestly, into her eyes.

She turned her head away. "You have all your old recklessness," she
answered. Then her eyes softened, and, "All your old courage," she
added.

"I have all my old motive."

"What is-your motive?"

Does a woman ever know how much such speeches cost? Did Jessica quite
know when she asked the question, what her own motive was; how much it
had of delicate malice--unless there was behind it a simple sincerity?
She was inviting sorrow. A man like Iberville was not to be counted
lightly; for every word he sowed, he would reap a harvest of some kind.

He came close to her, and looked as though he would read her through and
through. "Can you ask that question?" he said most seriously. "If you
ask it because from your soul you wish to know, good! But if you ask it
as a woman who would read a man's heart, and then--"

"Oh, hush!--hush!" she whispered. Her face became pale, and her eyes
had a painful brightness. "You must not answer. I had no right to ask.
Oh, monsieur!" she added, "I would have you always for my friend if I
could, though you are the enemy of my country and of the man--I am to
marry."

"I am for my king," he replied; "and I am enemy of him who stands between
you and me. For see: from the hour that I met you I knew that some day,
even as now, I should tell you that--I love you--indeed, Jessica, with
all my heart."

"Oh, have pity!" she pleaded. "I cannot listen--I cannot."

"You shall listen, for you have remembered me and have understood.
Voila!" he added, hastily catching her silver buckle from his bosom.
"This that you sent me, look where I have kept it--on my heart!"

She drew back from him, her face in her hands. Then suddenly she put
them out as though to prevent him coming near her, and said:

"Oh, no--no! You will spare me; I am an affianced wife." An appealing
smile shone through her tears. "Oh, will you not go?" she begged. "Or,
will you not stay and forget what you have said? We are little more than
strangers; I scarcely know you; I--"

"We are no strangers," he broke in. "How can that be, when for years I
have thought of you--you of me? But I am content to wait, for my love
shall win you yet. You--"

She came to him and put her hands upon his arm. "You remember," she
said, with a touch of her old gaiety, and with an inimitable grace, "what
good friends we were that first day we met? Let us be the same now--for
this time at least. Will you not grant me this for to-day?"

"And to-morrow?" he asked, inwardly determining to stay in the port of
New York and to carry her off as his wife; but, unlike Bucklaw, with her
consent.

At that moment the governor returned, and Iberville's question was never
answered. Nor did he dine at Government House, for word came secretly
that English ships were coming from Boston to capture him. He had,
therefore, no other resource but to sail out and push on for Quebec.
He would not peril the lives of his men merely to follow his will with
Jessica.

What might have occurred had he stayed is not easy to say--fortunes
turn on strange trifles. The girl, under the influence of his masterful
spirit and the rare charm of his manner, might have--as many another has
--broken her troth. As it was, she wrote Iberville a letter and sent it
by a courier, who never delivered it. By the same fatality, of the
letters which he wrote her only one was received. This told her that
when he returned from a certain cruise he would visit her again, for he
was such an enemy to her country that he was keen to win what did it most
honour. Gering had pressed for a marriage before he sailed for the
Spaniards' country, but she had said no, and when he urged it she had
shown a sudden coldness. Therefore, bidding her good-bye, he had sailed
away with Phips, accompanied, much against his will, by Radisson.
Bucklaw was not with them. He had set sail from England in a trading
schooner, and was to join Phips at Port de la Planta. Gering did not
know that Bucklaw had share in the expedition, nor did Bucklaw guess
the like of Gering.

Within two weeks of the time that Phips in his Bridgwater Merchant,
manned by a full crew, twenty fighting men, and twelve guns, with
Gering in command of the Swallow, a smaller ship, got away to the south,
Iberville also sailed in the same direction. He had found awaiting him,
on his return to Quebec, a priest bearing messages and a chart from
another priest who had died in the Spaniards' country.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH THE HUNTERS ARE OUT

Iberville had a good ship. The Maid of Provence carried a handful of
guns and a small but carefully chosen crew, together with Sainte-Helene,
Perrot, and the lad Maurice Joval, who had conceived for Iberville
friendship nigh to adoration. Those were days when the young were
encouraged to adventure, and Iberville had no compunction in giving the
boy this further taste of daring.

Iberville, thorough sailor as he was, had chosen for his captain one who
had sailed the Spanish Main. He had commanded on merchant-ships which
had been suddenly turned into men-of-war, and was suited to the present
enterprise: taciturn, harsh of voice, singularly impatient, but a perfect
seaman and as brave as could be. He had come to Quebec late the previous
autumn with the remnants of a ship which, rotten when she left the port
of Havre, had sprung a leak in mid-ocean, had met a storm, lost her
mainmast, and by the time she reached the St. Lawrence had scarce a stick
standing. She was still at Quebec, tied up in the bay of St. Charles,
from which she would probably go out no more. Her captain--Jean Berigord
--had chafed on the bit in the little Hotel Colbert, making himself more
feared than liked, till one day he was taken to Iberville by Perrot.

A bargain was soon struck. The nature of the expedition was not known in
Quebec, for the sailors were not engaged till the eve of starting, and
Perrot's men were ready at his bidding without why or wherefore. Indeed,
when the Maid of Provence left the island of Orleans, her nose seawards,
one fine July morning, the only persons in Quebec that knew her
destination were the priest who had brought Iberville the chart of
the river, with its accurate location of the sunken galleon, Iberville's
brothers, and Count Frontenac himself--returned again as governor.

"See, Monsieur Iberville," said the governor, as, with a fine show of
compliment, in full martial dress, with his officers in gold lace,
perukes, powder, swords, and ribbons, he bade Iberville good-bye--"See,
my dear captain, that you find the treasure, or make these greedy English
pay dear for it. They have a long start, but that is nothing, with a
ship under you that can show its heels to any craft. I care not so much
about the treasure, but I pray you humble those dull Puritans, who turn
buccaneers in the name of the Lord."

Iberville made a gallant reply, and, with Sainte-Helene, received a
hearty farewell from the old soldier, who, now over seventy years of age,
was as full of spirit as when he distinguished himself at Arras fifty
years before. In Iberville he saw his own youth renewed, and foretold
the high part he would yet play in the fortunes of New France. Iberville
had got to the door and was bowing himself out when, with a quick
gesture, Frontenac stopped him, stepped quickly forward, and clasping his
shoulders kissed him on each cheek, and said in a deep, kind voice: "I
know, mon enfant, what lies behind this. A man pays the price one time
or another: he draws his sword for his mistress and his king; both
forget, but one's country remains--remains."

Iberville said nothing, but with an admiring glance into the aged,
iron face, stooped and kissed Frontenac's hand and withdrew silently.
Frontenac, proud, impatient, tyrannical, was the one man in New France
who had a powerful idea of the future of the country, and who loved her
and his king by the law of a loyal nature. Like Wolsey, he had found his
king ungrateful, and had stood almost alone in Canada among his enemies,
as at Versailles among his traducers--imperious, unyielding, and yet
forgiving. Married, too, at an early age, his young wife, caring little
for the duties of maternity and more eager to serve her own ambitions
than his, left him that she might share the fortunes of Mademoiselle de
Montpensier.

Iberville had mastered the chart before he sailed, and when they were
well on their way he disclosed to the captain the object of their voyage.
Berigord listened to all he had to say, and at first did no more than
blow tobacco smoke hard before him. "Let me see the chart," he said at
last, and, scrutinising it carefully, added: "Yes, yes, 'tis right
enough. I've been in the port and up the river. But neither we nor the
Eng lish'll get a handful of gold or silver thereabouts. 'Tis throwing
good money after none at all."

"The money is mine, my captain," said Iberville good-humouredly. "There
will be sport, and I ask but that you give me every chance you can."

"Look then, monsieur," replied the smileless man, "I'll run your ship for
all she holds from here to hell, if you twist your finger. She's as good
a craft as ever I spoke, and I'll swear her for any weather. The
fighting and the gold as you and the devil agree!"

Iberville wished nothing better--a captain concerned only with his own
duties. Berigord gathered the crew and the divers on deck, and in half a
dozen words told them the object of the expedition, and was followed by
Iberville. Some of the men had been with him to Hudson's Bay, and they
wished nothing better than fighting the English, and all were keen with
the lust of gold even though it were for another. As it was, Iberville
promised them all a share of what was got.

On the twentieth day after leaving Quebec they sighted islands, and
simultaneously they saw five ships bearing away towards them. Iberville
was apprehensive that a fleet of the kind could only be hostile, for
merchant-ships would hardly sail together so, and it was not possible
that they were French. There remained the probability that they were
Spanish or English ships. He had no intention of running away, but at
the same time he had no wish to fight before he reached Port de la Planta
and had had his hour with Gering and Phips and the lost treasure.
Besides, five ships was a large undertaking, which only a madman would
willingly engage. However, he kept steadily on his course. But there
was one chance of avoiding a battle without running away--the glass had
been falling all night and morning. Berigord, when questioned, grimly
replied that there was to be trouble, but whether with the fleet or the
elements was not clear, and Iberville did not ask.

He got his reply effectively and duly however. A wind suddenly sprang up
from the north-west, followed by a breaking cross sea. It as suddenly
swelled to a hurricane, so that if Berigord had not been fortunate as to
his crew, and had not been so fine a sailor, the Maid of Provence might
have fared badly, for he kept all sail on as long as he dare, and took it
in none too soon. But so thoroughly did he know the craft and trust his
men that she did what he wanted; and though she was tossed and hammered
by the sea till it seemed that she must, with every next wave, go down,
she rode into safety at last, five hundred miles out of their course.

The storm had saved them from the hostile fleet, which had fared ill.
They were first scattered, then two of them went down, another was so
disabled that she had to be turned back to the port they had left, and
the remaining two were separated, so that their only course was to return
to port also. As the storm came up they had got within fighting distance
of the Maid of Provence, and had opened ineffectual fire, which she--
occupied with the impact of the storm--did not return. Escaped the
dangers of the storm, she sheered into her course again, and ran away to
the south-west, until Hispaniola came in sight.

CHAPTER XV

IN THE MATTER OF BUCKLAW

The Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow made the voyage down with no set-
backs, having fair weather and a sweet wind on their quarter all the way,
to the wild corner of an island, where a great mountain stands sentinel
and a bay washes upon a curving shore and up the. River de la Planta.
There were no vessels in the harbour and there was only a small
settlement on the shore, and as they came to anchor well away from the
gridiron of reefs known as the Boilers, the prospect was handsome: the
long wash of the waves, the curling, white of the breakers, and the
rainbow-coloured water. The shore was luxuriant, and the sun shone
intemperately on the sea and the land, covering all with a fine beautiful
haze, like the most exquisite powder sifted through the air. All on
board the Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow were in hearty spirits.
There had been some sickness, but the general health of the expedition
was excellent.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3